Samsung Galaxy S9: release date, price, camera, AR Emoji

On the eve of the MWC 2018, 25th February 2018, Samsung announced its new flagship smartphones for this year, the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus. The latest Smartphones will be for several months the headliners of the Korean leader, until the announcement of the Galaxy Note 9.

Camera

The Galaxy S9 has minor but significant improvements from last year’s S9, The biggest improvement is in the camera department with better performance in low light but more importantly the dual camera wich is seen on the on Galaxy S9 Plus. We would have liked to see the dual camera on the S9, however like Apple with the iPhone 8, Samsung has also decided to reserve that feature for the Plus only.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 will have a Dual aperture mode which means the main camera offers a wide-angle lens with a double aperture, F1.5 and F2.4. Simply put, when taking pictures in a dark environment, the Galaxy S9 will use the first aperture and when in daylight it switches to the second – Samsung promises a gain of 28% in brightness compared to the Galaxy S8.

Display

As for the screen, we find a Super AMOLED display called “Infinity Display” with a diagonal of 5.8 inches for the S9 and 6.2 inches for the S9 Plus; both are compatible with Mobile HDR Premium.

Like the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8, there are no physical buttons on the front of the phone but rather an invisible home button, which is placed at the bottom of the screen . The fingerprint reader is always on the back of the device, but Samsung has responded to criticism of the Galaxy S8 and has moved the scanner under the camera, therefore much more accessible than on its predecessor.

Performance

Under the hood, is a new Exynos 9810 Octa-core 64-bit processor (2.7 GHz Quad + 1.7 GHz Quad) engraved in 10nm. In the US, you can also find the Galaxy S9 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. In terms of memory, the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus will be available in either 64 GB or 256 GB, accompanied by 4 GB of RAM on the S9 and 6 GB of RAM on the S9 Plus.

AR Emoji and Bixby

Samsung has developed an AR Emoji feature. If Apple uses a dedicated IR sensor to recognize your face, Samsung will use face recognition to model your face and turn it into an emoji. Additionally, you will be able to send your emoji self as a GIF file, which makes it compatible with most smartphones.

Bixby, Samsung’s virtual assistant, first seen last year on the S8, has also been updated with some new features. You can now translate text simply by scanning it using the camera, you can now also get calorie information by scanning food labels.

When will it be released?

The Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus will be released on the 16th of March in the UK, both devices will be available in 3 colours, midnight black, lilac purple, coral blue. Prices will start from £739 for the S9 and £869 for the S9 Plus – the phone is now available to pre-order.